Lee Byung-hun thriller The Koreans set to be biggest K-drama of 2027
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(From left) Lee Byung-hun, Han Ji-min and Lee Hee-jun will star in South Korean drama The Koreans.
PHOTO: DISNEY+
SEOUL – One of the biggest K-dramas of 2027 may already be taking shape.
Titled The Koreans, the Disney+ project remains largely under wraps, with few plot details revealed beyond a standout roster of cast and creatives.
South Korean actor Lee Byung-hun, known for playing the cold mastermind Frontman in the Netflix series Squid Game (2021 to 2025) and the protagonist in Park Chan-wook’s film No Other Choice (2025), is set to play the lead role.
South Korean actress Han Ji-min, the romance queen behind hit dramas such as Love Scout (2025), will star opposite him.
The A-list cast is joined by a stellar team behind the camera, led by director Ahn Gil-ho, who helmed Netflix series The Glory (2022 to 2023). Park Eun-kyo, whose past projects include thrillers Made In Korea (2025 to present) and The Silent Sea (2021), is attached as writer.
The Koreans is adapted from The Americans (2013 to 2018), the highly acclaimed American espionage thriller series that won the Golden Globe for best television drama in 2019.
Starring American actress Keri Russell and Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, The Americans unfolds during the Cold War in the 1980s, focusing on Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, a pair of KGB operatives in a staged marriage who live undercover as suburban travel agents in Washington, DC.
The Americans starring Keri Russell (left) and Matthew Rhys.
PHOTO: FX
The Koreans will be set during South Korea’s democratisation and rapid cultural transformation in the early 1990s, revolving around a seemingly ordinary middle-class family concealing a secret.
To their friends, neighbours and even their children, Myung-joon (Lee) and his wife Hwa-kyung (Han) appear unremarkable. But in reality, they are elite North Korean operatives embedded in the South, tasked with undermining the state from within.
Lee Byung-hun at the script-reading session of The Koreans, which is adapted from US thriller The Americans.
PHOTO: DISNEY+
The drama tracks the pair as they grapple with clashing loyalties, questions of identity and the pull of personal relationships, all while a relentless South Korean counterintelligence agent closes in on their true identities.
According to Disney+, the narrative will also underscore the deep divide between the two Koreas, once a single nation but now split along ideological lines. The streaming platform added that The Koreans, which is in production, would diverge from its source material. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
